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What can we learn from evolution that can help us have better lives, communities, and societies?

What can we do to participate consciously and wisely in the evolutionary process?

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If you are interested in how evolution applies to spirituality and/or societal change, you are invited to participate in this wiki. Diverse people have different perspectives on evolution and its relevance. Ideally this wiki will come to represent the whole evolutionary movement, including those who find meaning in evolution but don't assign it spiritual significance.

When there is an expert consensus on a wiki page of particular importance to the founders of this wiki, they will preserve that special version onto a non-wiki page on EvolutionarySpirituality.org. They invite you to visit. The relevant page on this wiki will then be free to continue to evolve through further edits.

If you are part of a network with a different evolutionary perspective than the Great Story, the founders of this wiki encourage you to use it in the same way they do, preserving your favorite versions of these wiki pages elsewhere, for the use of your network.

Reviving '

a 2600 years old “Foundation for Evolutionary Spirituality”'It was 2600 years ago when two great minds, the axis philosophers, one in Greece the other in China, intuited the underlying cause for all Creation/Evolution. Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote his “Logos” on fragile clay tablets of which few survived, but Lao-tse used the more advanced Chinese method which preserved his “Tao te Ching”. Lao Tzu’s 40th Premise is the conclusion of this Tao Te Ching and gives us the FOUNDATION when it says: “Polarity causes the movement of the Tao,the world and All Things EVOLVE from its existence, which clearly states that “Dualism is instrumental for all Evolution”. --- As far as I know, none of the modern Spiritualists is using that foundation. The two twentieth century’s great spiritual evolutionary pioneers are Tailhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo and both have been Dr. Beatrice Bruteau’s life’s study and her new book, “A Song that goes on Singing” will be based on their writings, but correctly without the “Omega point” from Tailhard’s work. I began my own 7 pages on the above subject as a critic on the interview given by Dr. Bruteau about her book, when in truth it is a critic on the two famous Spiritualists above. --- I find two Concepts of Tailhard’s writing unacceptable. One is the claim that any further Noetic evolution will depend entirely on human initiative and without it the Universe will fall back into maximal entropy. --- (Poppycock!) --- Evolution is God’s major purpose for creating our “Universe” in the first place. It never was fragile, because Evolution is a Processof the Universe itself -- in which we humans are just one sentient race of Millions. --- Oh ye of little faith! -–The other claim is for gluttonous use of Agape’ which is an outright ludicrous demand, because it is “counter productive” for any kind of evolution. --- God’s Noetic Evolution has now been in force, here on earth, for at least 12000 years, ever since the Stone Age, and if we eventually comprehend what makes the process actually work and become “Co-Creators” with God, we will get a less bloody evolution. It will still be done by survival of the fittest Culture, but with much less collateral damage)
Just as Dr. Bruteau has her favorite philosophers, so do I. A Dr. John Young writes: Englishman Alfred North Whitehead was the primary spokesman for process thinking. Built on ideas of both Darwin’s natural evolution and Hegel’s historical evolution, Whitehead argued that reality is dynamic, organic, and social. The world is a creative, interdependent process of entities that give and receive from one another. It is an unfolding process of ever more complex societies growing together. Actual entities are interdependent. Humans discover and create patterns and concepts to explain them, but creativity itself is at the heart of reality. God becomes Creation itself, neither independent nor immutable.

God is enriched by the world. God and World are interdependent. God too learns and evolves. God’s relation to the world is one of persuasive love rather than coercive power. Humans do suffer and die, as well savor and create; there is real loss and tragedy in the world, but peoples’ evolving lives furnish God with new experiences to incorporate into God’s consequent nature. Perishing entities achieve immortality not only in the power and memories of their friends but in the evolving nature of Creation or God itself. Creation in turn pours back into the world new visions and possibilities of creative advance. Whitehead’s God is like the modern parent, evolving beyond patriarchy or matriarchy, authoritarianism, or being always right into learning from their children and evolving with them. ---[The Cosmos is Self-Creation of God] ---

I hope this last paragraph is not just <wishful thinking> and that it will provide for jobs as Co-Creator. I did apply for such a job (<-- click here), but I was rejected! ------ (These days jobs are hard to get.)<'Right now Evolution is still running on <Auto-Pilot> and God’s many helpers (in heaven) are just standing by, watching with depraved indifference. What if these would instead help by selecting Co-pilots from earth for this <plane of evolution>? Teaching the <Foundation of Evolution> and the <Creative Process> and EMPOWERING these Co-Pilots to implement their creative solutions before “God’s Auto-pilot” can crash the plane and kill (the physical bodies of) the passengers. (Creative solutions are landing a damaged plane in the Hudson River or on the Autobahn, with no casualties.) I see no help being provided by these “helpers” (Angels?) and at age 75 I am very angry, because for me now to die means <getting out off the rain and 'into a down-pour'>. WhileTailhard and Bruteau are both correct in what Noetic evolution accomplishes, they don’t understand how “God’s Universe” actually facilitates evolution. - Interestingly, modern understanding of Noetic evolution might have finally disclosed a major error made by most spiritual thinkers throughout the ages.(Jesus and Buddha both made this error.) ---- See the “cardinal error'” on page seven. ---

The largest whole is seen as beyond and embracing all polarities, including existence and nonexistence, spirit and matter, mind and body, nature and culture. In Buddhist terms, this is Buddha Mind in its aspects of formlessness and form.

The world of phenomena is a seamless process from which we can discern subsystems such as galaxies, solar systems, the Earth, individuals and so on. This is the view of the whole (Absolute). From the view of the parts, we can say that the world is radically interconnected (Relative).

The world of phenomena is flux, always new, different, fresh.

Everything within the world of phenomena has infinite causes and infinite effects.

From the view of the largest whole (Absolute), there is only the doing and no individual or separate doer within this whole. From the view of the parts (Relative), there is the appearance of a doer - although radically interconnected with the larger whole.

And there are aspects of the Great Story which appear compatible with Buddhism.

About once a week a wiki user will choose a page they really like from this wiki and post here a short excerpt from it, with a link to the whole page. If no regular user does this, a steward or administrator will.